One, the silence of the lambs. It is the silence of those people who have learned to love their oppression, and thus, by the miraculous force of some unholy spirit out there, learn to be resigned to their faith and submit to whatever comes in their life. It is the silence of the cattle train going to Dachau. It is that prayer of the millions who were gassed in those chambers built for the purpose of reducing each resister to smithereens by a man, Hitler, who loved his German national language so much as well as his homeland that he invoked nationalism and patriotism--the two mantras--all the time especially when he was justifying his gassing of these people who did not have any idea he was lunatic.

Two, the silence of full understanding, the silence that is mystical, the silence where language is beyond language, the silence where language is not needed, when speech is not necessary, when understanding is its own definition.

Now comes the accusation of this academic--and I am not going to write his name here because he might enjoy the attention given him, this attention-seeking naive nationalist representing himself as a 'nationalist' and a 'patriot' (read, read!): "The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is funding the current anti-Filipino trend among the pseudo-intellectuals. Writers of anti-Filipino articles are in the payroll of the CIA. Their articles follow the same script: wrongly attack the national language as a mere imposition of 'imperial Manila', pit the mother tongue activists against advocates of the national language; while at the same time using English to condemn 'Tagalog imperialism.' [Retrieved from Tanggol Wika via a screen grab, 29 June 2014, by J G L Eugenio]

Several points--and I am breaking my silence. I refuse. I resist. 1. The accusation that CIA is funding these efforts of people in the periphery is something that he has yet to prove. You have no proof, get lost. Scram.

2. He says the 'writers of anti-Filipino articles are on the payroll of the CIA. Still, if you have no proof to offer, you cannot say this thing. Scram.

3. He says: these writers "wrongly attack the national language as a mere imposition of 'imperial Manila'". True, true, and true. He should know the history of that imposition. Its genesis is in the 1934-1935 proceedings of the Constitutional Assembly. He should read the backdoor maneuverings. So: scram.

4. He says: the writers 'pit mother tongue activists against advocates of the national language'. Ow, come on, dude: the mother tongue activists are the same people who have been at the receiving end of this 80-year old oppressive. So: scram.

5. He says: the writers use "English to condemn 'Tagalog imperialism.'" Of course! Why would we use his Tagalog which is the instrument of his own illusory empire? And he uses English to tell the writers that they are on the payroll of the CIA? We challenge this academic to write an international conference paper held abroad and let us see if someone is going to listen to him despite the fact that the likes of him claim that his Tagalog is a 'global language.' So: scram.

A SUPERVISOR in Ilocos Norte used a minion of a public school teacher under her supervision to destroy me.

That was years ago, long before MTB-MLE would become MTB-MLE.

The teacher wanted to become 'a famous person of some sort', according to the supervisor, and so the supervisor wrote a news account of my talk at the launching of MTB-MLE in Laoag City when MTB-MLE was still in its gestation stage, when our attempt to resist and struggle against this widespread Tagalogization happening in our schools and public life was still an infant's attempt at crawling.

The ragtag band of believers of MTB-MLE went to many places, and at that Laoag sortie where I was one of the speakers, I talked about the idiotic policy on the national language of the commonwealth president.

The supervisor was not present in that talk.

Instead, she sent her pit-bulls to report to her what I talked about.

And then I landed as a banner story of the Ilocos Times, the title screaming, and the opening line equally screaming because I called the 'Father of the National Language' idiot.

I did not know about this unhappy event until someone from the Philippines notified me of this misdeed of a supervisor who was more than her prime and poised to retire.

A journalist investigated, and found out some clues to the connivance.

And then some years later, a colleague found out the real story: that the supervisor who used the minion of a public school teacher to fight her war against me.

She used the name of that teacher in that news story, the story supposedly written by the minion. 'That news story would make him famous,' she claimed, referring to the minion who connived with her. 'Ta kayatna met ti agsikat' was the phrase she used.

I had the chance to talk to that minion of a teacher, and he cried, apologizing to me profusely, asking for forgiveness, and promising to correct his mistake.

Today, that supervisor has become a beneficiary of the struggle many of us were engaged in, a struggle that led to the MTB-MLE.

I played a small part--just a small part--in that struggle, but today, those who were opposing us like pit-bulls are now benefitting from what we had done.

SABBATICAL NOTES. 30 JUNE 2014. MONDAY. N3. Lessons from 'The Story of English' and the need to resist and struggle

I HAVE PROMISED a state college in the Visayas that I would send them books for their library.

I had the chance to train their instructional, administrative, and non-teaching academic staff for a number of days, and I had the chance to see their library.

Lo and behold, I realized how we have been so privileged elsewhere, with our access to books and to other instructional materials for our edification and for the education and training of our students.

As a reflex reaction, I told their librarian that I would send them books. That was a month ago, and tonight, my son and I made time to select our books for disposal.

We checked those we believe we no longer need.

We have brought home boxes and boxes of books again from a book sale, and we realized the need to honor my promise, with the son donating his own books that have taken residency in his own room, each book vying a space from his shelves that are getting filled up almost every week.

Some books have that power in us that like a dear friend, we do not want to lose. But we remember too that more students and readers would benefit from these if we have them made available in libraries.

I checked my shelf, and decided with courage which book goes to the LBC Balikbayan box that will find its way to the Visayas.

One book caught my attention, a hard-bound, thick, light-blue colored book, "The Story of English."

I check the inside pages, remembering that I usually write on the edges of my books. I leave comments on the page. I use pencil, I use pen, I use markers, I use anything to underline or mark which page or part I like, which idea intrigues me, which idea does not make sense to me.

And lo and behold, I hit that part that talks about English as a language of protest when the Roman empire recognized only Latin and when the English rulers only recognized Latin and French as legit languages in their political realm.

Three invasions and wars tell us of the humble beginnings of English, the language that has traveled outside England, and has remained English despite its variation.

English may be a colonial language, but it is honest in its being a colonial language.

Some other language within a country is being used to prop up an empty claim, the claim hiding behind the mantra of nationalism that is only for the oligarchs and plutocrats.

SABBATICAL NOTES. 20 JUNE 2014. MONDAY. N1.Falsifying the de facto argument about 'Filipino' as the national language, and hence, must be mandated, and worse, imposed.

FOR ALMOST NINE decades now, this Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino language (for Tagalog) or dialect (for P/Filipino) has been rammed into the throat of every Tomas, Diko, and Harry in the Philippines.

The brainwashing that we have to have this 'language' taught among our youth begins in the early years of every unthinking person in the Philippines and lasts until college, or a total of at least 12 years of education, or even more for those who entered the pre-school and/or went through Grade 7 (for some sectarian schools).

Even as our young who are not from the Tagalog areas are taught this Tagalog-based P/Filipino, they are not at all--NOT AT ALL--given the chance to know their own mother language.

Which leads to the Tagalogization of the mindset of the Ilonggo educatee, the Tagalogization of the Tausog, the Tagalogization of the Boholano, the Tagalogization of the Kapampangan. The list goes on and on, and on and on.

Now comes the 'de facto' argument which states that Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino has been in effect the language of the everyone in the Philippines and has been declared as such by the 1987 Cory Constitution and as such, there is no reason why we have to reject it.

We have, of course, other legal instruments, such as the 1974 Constitution for that older version of the rendering as de facto this abracadabra of a law, and in the older times, the enactment by the Commonwealth Regime of the imposition of Tagalog as the 'basis' of the national language.

In the deception is that calculated forgetting of the word 'basis'.

The 1987 Constitution is bolder, but even that boldness contains a seed of its own contradiction.

It declared in a de facto way that 'Filipino' is the national language, and it declares as well that it is 'evolving'. Ah, the sleight of hand.

There is the legal hemeneut, Emilio Betti, whose works on textual interpretation leads us to question this hocus-pocus technique of the powerful.

There is something unethical and substantially illegal in these maneuverings, and we need to untangle the deception by looking into the intentions of those involved in this triumphalism that characterizes nation building and state crafting.

No, you cannot legislate an unjust law, even if this law is part of the Constitution.

For one thing, the declaration that Filipino as the national language when that language does not exist, is a fictive provision as it has no basis in reality.

What these people have is the existence of Tagalog and not Filipino, and that is where we can locate the lie.

THERE IS picture of the jailed senator, Bong Revilla, going around social media and is picking up steam wherever this mal aire--the evil wind--hits something, say the area of self-evident truth lodged in the mind of the wiser Onoys.

These are the wiser Ordinary Pinoys.

The picture has the 'pogi' looks of the senator, his smile about to burst, the light of the sun all aglow and hitting his clear eyes, as if seeing the phantom of the inimitable Nardong Putik, the phantom looming large before him and accusing him, 'You are just a trying-hard, second-rate copycat!'

That mug shot--but shot sideways--is the confident poise of a man who has entertained in his head the limitless possibilities of running the affairs of 100M people, majority of whom are politically and culturally illiterate as they have through the years kept on electing leaders of the brutish kind.

There is that thing in philosophical psychology that talks about brutes, those animals separate from Man the Animal because of their irrationality, their lack of reason, and their inability to put two and two together.

We have a generous display of these brutish attributes lately, and we repeat these attributes here: irrationality and the incapacity to use the grey matter between the ears.

SABBATICAL NOTES NOTE. 28 JUNE 2014. SATURDAY. N1. P-Noy, Noynoy, Pinoy, and Onoy. Or, what is in a name.

SOMEWHERE on the wall of a good friend, Amelia Bojo, an activist academic and scientist par excellence who has learned the route back to good belly laughing pro re nata like a Zen Buddhist who has seen the truth, there is that reference to the ordinary Pinoy.

She calls it Onoy.

While we all know those references to the ''noy'' last syllable--and we can list some here to wit, abnoy (abnormal Pinoy), Noynoy (that is the current president before he got to Malacañan as president himself), Ninoy (the father of Noynoy and the husband of the yellow president, Cory Aquino), P-Noy (that is the president now as he metamorphosed like a butterfly, out of his cocoon as the inheritor of a throne of a country that calls itself democratic but is, in truth and in fact, dynastic, and thus, monarchic in the Dark Ages)--Prof Amelia got it right when she called the suffering masses, all of them thinking and unthinking, those who believe in the lies of senatongs and representa-thieves, as Onoy.

Yes, the ordinary Pinoy.

The masses who think but do not have the public sphere through which they could create a space for all their acts of thinking through what is best for the homeland of cheats and thieves and rascals and highwaymen.

The masses, and this is worse than the first one, who do not think at all, and who elect every Tomas, Diko, and Hari for as long as these scum of the earth have Ninoy the currency inserted in ballot boxes or sandwiches or tetra-pack drinks.

The Onoy, ah, the Onoy.

Either you hate them, or you vow to the heavens you need to love them no matter what.

At day's-end, the Onoy need saving from all the other Pinoy who can only hell.

And the Onoy, at least many of them politically illiterate ones, need saving from themselves as well.

SABBATICAL NOTES. 27 JUNE 2014. FRIDAY. N2. One lousy argument for the continued use of Filipino as MOI in college: the loss of jobs.

Okey, let us be clear on the recent position of these people: the use of Filipino in the teaching of 9 general education courses.

In a country that is by its very nature linguistically diverse, the mandating of one 'language' as the medium of instruction effectively excludes the others.

Whatever is the justification--one of these is the 'intellectualization' of Filipino--this position of these people is outrightly missing the point: you mandate one 'language', you effectively marginalize the others.

Presuming that the schizophrenic Filipino language (what is it, really, except that it has been, by the force of a hocus-pocus renamed as such?) is the national language, there is no justification to have it imposed in tertiary education, even under the guise that this is 'merely' an medium of instructio, and even under the guise of having it intellectualized when there is not an equal chance given to other other--and 'othered'--Philippine languages.

Fair is fair.

Let us not kid ourselves: we have here a case in which the medium is the message.

You want the future citizens to be of service to their own people, teach them their own language, teach them their own culture, imbue in them their sense of community, and make their tertiary education an occasion for a synthesis of their knowledge and skills and values so that they can eventually bring these to their own communities.

You want the future citizens to appreciate other peoples, communities, nations, and countries, teach them these things, expose them to these other realities that are otherwise inaccessible to them.

You want to make them adept in international relations and in the affairs of others, show them the world, and not only the limited world of the 'national language'.

You make them understand the world more fully in the round, make them use the language that they are most competent with, more adept in, and more at home in.

It is high time that we really go glocal--local and yet global.

We fail in this, we fail in our mission in tertiary education.

The argument that more than 10,000 instructors of Filipino will lose their jobs and that there is the need to continue the use of Filipino as MOI because of this is a lousy argument for another kind of tertiary education hijacked by interest groups.

The teaching of these 9 credits of GE is not by way of knowledge of the Filipino 'language' and thus, the proponents of making that 'language' as MOI commits a fallacy.

That position equates knowledge of the 'language' and the knowledge of the 'content' in these 9 credits of GE.

Which is not necessarily the case.

We are in a bind here in the same way we were in a bind in the abolition of 12 credits of Spanish as mandatory in college.

And yet we have to resolve the issue.

Is the interest of these 10,000 teachers more important than the interest--and the future--of millions of students in college who will be affected by this scenario?

SABBATICAL NOTES. 27 JUNE 2014. FRIDAY. N2. One lousy argument for the continued use of Filipino as MOI in college: the loss of jobs.

Okey, let us be clear on the recent position of these people: the use of Filipino in the teaching of 9 general education courses.

In a country that is by its very nature linguistically diverse, the mandating of one 'language' as the medium of instruction effectively excludes the others.

Whatever is the justification--one of these is the 'intellectualization' of Filipino--this position of these people is outrightly missing the point: you mandate one 'language', you effectively marginalize the others.

Presuming that the schizophrenic Filipino language (what is it, really, except that it has been, by the force of a hocus-pocus renamed as such?) is the national language, there is no justification to have it imposed in tertiary education, even under the guise that this is 'merely' an medium of instructio, and even under the guise of having it intellectualized when there is not an equal chance given to other other--and 'othered'--Philippine languages.

Fair is fair.

Let us not kid ourselves: we have here a case in which the medium is the message.

You want to future citizens to be of serve to their own people, teach them their own language, teach them their own culture, imbue in them their sense of community, and make their tertiary education an occasion for a synthesis of their knowledge and skills and values so that they can eventually bring these to their own communities.

You want the future citizens to appreciate other peoples, communities, nations, and countries, teach them these things, expose them to these other realities that are otherwise inaccessible to them.

You want to make them adept in international relations and in the affairs of others, show them the world, and not only the limited world of the 'national language'.

You make them understand the world more fully in the round, make them use the language that they are most competent with, more adept in, and more at home in.

It is high time that we really go glocal--local and yet global.

We fail in this, we fail in our mission in tertiary education.

The argument that more than 10,000 instructors of Filipino will lose their jobs and that there is the need to continue the use of Filipino as MOI because of this is a lousy argument for another kind of tertiary education hijacked by interest groups.

The teaching of these 9 credits of GE is not by way of knowledge of the Filipino 'language' and thus, the proponents of making that 'language' as MOI commits a fallacy.

That position equates knowledge of the 'language' and the knowledge of the 'content' in these 9 credits of GE.

Which is not necessarily the case.

We are in a bind here in the same way we were in a bind in the abolition of 12 credits of Spanish as mandatory in college.

And yet we have to resolve the issue.

Is the interest of these 10,000 teachers more important than the interest--and the future--of millions of students in college who will be affected by this scenario?

SABBATICAL NOTES. 27 JUNE 2014. FRIDAY. The meaning of tertiary education, the Philippine case, and the contradiction in the use of the Filipino dialect in 9 units of general education.

TERTIARY EDUCATION is meant to open up the minds of students to the liberal arts and to the meaning of education as cultivation of the life of the mind.

It is not meant to instill civics and citizenship--these knowledge, skills, values--should have been addressed in the K-12.

Instead it is meant to make educands realize that tertiary education is:

1. a journey, that continuing act of exploration of the world and life beyond the nation and the state even as it is rooted in the nation and state, and

2. an act of equipping the person on a journey with the tools she needs in that journey.

The insistence, thus, of some groups to make mandatory the use of the Filipino dialect (or schizophrenic language) as the medium of instruction in the teaching of 9 credits of general education in tertiary education is a bundle of contradictions.

General education is simple enough: it should make educands see the issues in a variety of perspectives.

Now, two things are important in this argument:

1. The use of Filipino dialect in the teaching of these 9 units of GE limits that perspective, and thus, is antithetical to the very nature of GE, and

2. Language reveals the world and solves the issues of communities and peoples. The GE taught in the Filipino will only reveal the Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino world and never the rich diversity of the Philippines, the multiplicity in the experiences of the various peoples of this country, and the plurality of the modes of the people self-knowledge, both personal and collective, both private and collective.

In fine, the petition to request the use of Filipino in these 9 credits of GE only perpetuates the same naive nationalism that has not caught our imagination as it continues to perpetuate the same selfish interest of the ruling class, the same selfish interest of the hegemonic center, and the same selfish interest of those people who still believe in the falsities of the myopic view of 'isang bansa, isang diawa,' a view shared by a number of people that do not recognize the limitless possibilities of imagining the country as 'a nation among nations.'

Together with the rest of those who have seen the need to rethink our way of defining the Philippine nation state, to regard the country's languages and cultures as social resources, and to evolve a model of education that is not only emancipatory but also professional and competent, I wish to express here the need to say No! to the making of yet another 'mandatory' teaching of the schizophrenic 'national language' in tertiary education.

I WISH THOSE who do not understand the discourse on the injustice in the institution of Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino read--or read again--the book of one national artist who deserves that honor accorded to him by a nation made up of many nations.

That nation made up of many nations is the Philippines for you, and the mind that does not see this but simply sweeps under the rug the remnant of an inutile discourse about 'nation building' following a centrist, dominant, and hegemonic reasoning and uses nationalism to deploy scare tactics to those who see things otherwise needs to revisit the assumptions in the institution of a national language that has caused our educational and cultural imprisonment.

Many simply mouth those motherhood statements they heard from their teachers who had no moral ascendancy to teach their educands on the merit of diversity and multiplicity of which the Philippines is.

Many of these teachers have produced citizens who are now as ignorant as them.

We read, for instance, those mindless arguments about the provision of the national language by the Cory Constitution, one instrument of law that dilly-dallied the institution of socially just and fair economic, cultural, and political structures right after EDSA I.

With all the powers in her hand--and with the Freedom Constitution that she could have used to institute sweeping reforms for the suffering peoples, what the yellow president did is simply remove the two years of Spanish in the tertiary curriculum, instituted the use of 'Filipino' in all government transactions (of course, no one followed that executive order!), and made it sure that the Hacienda Luisita will remain in the hands of the relatives of President Aquino and the superstar of Philippine television, Kris Aquino.

With the coups d'etat as a cottage industry of those who had the power of the gun and the training in Martial Law repression, that recipe for national disaster made sense.

And this disaster continued after giving Marcos the pink slip, and it continues until today. The presidents after him all had a last name: useless.

Now comes Rolando Tinio's book, Where English Fails.

He said, and rightly so: the institution of Tagalog renamed Pilipino/Filipino is a sleight of hand.

SABBATICAL NOTES. WEDNESDAY. 25 JUNE 2014. WEDNESDAY. Against the Petition to Mandate the Filipino Dialect in Tertiary Education.

THERE IS THIS move of some people to mandate the Filipino dialect in tertiary education.

Now, this is something curious, and with years and years of being brainwashed with the use of this Filipino dialect in basic education, we are going the route of naive nationalism again, the same naive nationalism inaugurated during the Commonwealth regime of Quezon.

It was during that regime of 19th century nationalism that Tagalog was declared--and rammed into our throat--as the national language.

Later on, with sleight of hand tactic, Tagalog was renamed Pilipino, and then renamed Filipino once again.

All peoples of this country must be served notice that this is the wrong way to go in tertiary education, and that this brainwashing a la Gulag archipelago and Animal Farm is going to continue outside the K-12, and will turn every Tomas, Diko, and Hari into insensitive and callous citizens.

In a nation state that is as diverse and multiple as the Philippines, the best and most effective and most efficient language is the language of social justice and cultural democracy and emancipatory education.

The nominalist argument for the continued teaching of Filipino in college and university is unjust, unfair, inefficient.

SABBATICAL NOTES. WEDNESDAY. 25 JUNE 2014. WEDNESDAY. Whatever the 1987 Constitution says, Filipino is NOT a language but a dialect.

PEOPLE WHO simply read the 1987 Constitution cite that provision about the declaration of 'Filipino as the national language' of the country.

That provision, a handiwork of some of the boisterous Filipino academics of a state university and some others, defined Filipino wrongly as a language.

When a constitution is wrong, there is portion about having it checked to right the wrong things it has, and to make it sure that it serves as the instrument, that one basic instrument of the social contract.

Any student of political philosophy understands this fundamental thing and thus, it is but moral for us to demand that this portion of the constitution be corrected.

For one, there is 'Filipino as a language' does not exist, unless we believe in the enchanting power of those people who are so good in magic, and in that sleight of hand tactic.

Second, there are 181 native languages of the Philippines and the mandating of one effectively peripheralizes the others. The privileging of one, with all the tax monies allocated to pay for the salaries of those administering this linguistic injustice, is at best unconstitutional as it is unjust and unfair, and a waste of people's money for the wrong reasons.

It is high time we have this constitution amended, and say, for once, that the national language of the Philippines are all the languages of this country.

[For Amer, a former student of mine who passed on to another life, and who, for ten years, taught at UP Baguio and there trained caring and committed students, bequeathing to all of them the light he has seen.]

HIS photo, Return to Paradise, has that uncanny feel of what paradise is all about.

It has that texture of peace, quiet, tranquility, repose.

If Amer Amor were a monk by the Franciscan Monastery at Davila in Pasuquin, he could have written love songs for a beautiful life he lived, love songs for the people he touched and who touched him, and love songs for the Force that gave him the inspiration to capture for Eternity that temporal scene, freezing it as if it were a stone that has witnessed the mysteries of our comings and goings.

The word 'forty' is many things in the life of Christians in the Philippines.

It takes its allusions to the length of time between Christ's resurrection and his ascension to heaven, to the Father that sent him to earth and live among men and women and children and nature.

THERE IS THIS CLAIM now that the advocates of language rights (ALR) in the Philippines--the ragtag band of the real (read: not the fake ones) MTB-MLE educators and indigenous languages activists--are not willing to enter into a dialogue with the status quo and that there would be no dialogue when ALR keeps on using 'strong words' such as 'fascist' and 'schizophrenia.' Let us go procedural to respond to these claims.

Let us also define our terms in the process, the same act of defining our terms when we were in sophomore high school and were taught the meaning of context and the need to operationalize our terms.

1. Status quo (SQ) means that group of people who believe that the salvation of the Philippine nation state rests on the continuation of the state of affairs in education in general, and in the teaching of the schizophrenic Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino in particular.

2. SQ accuses ALR of using strong words such as: (2.1) fascism in national language, and (2.2) schizophrenia in Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino.

3. Let us go back to what fascism across the years is all about: 'A belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.' [New Oxford American Dictionary, NEOD]

4. Let us now see the meaning of schizophrenia, to wit, (4.1) 'a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation,' and (4.2) '(in general use) a mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements.' [NEOD}

5. Let us also see the meaning of dialogue. We are taking the second meaning of the term as this is more relevant to this issue at hand. The dictionary says that a dialogue is 'a discussion between two or more people or groups, esp. one directed toward exploration of a particular subject or resolution of a problem' [NEOD]

The accusation is that the ALR is not willing to enter into a dialogue with SQ.

Our response is this: we need to explore the issue, and we need to resolve the problems, and to do that, the dialogue partners--as the hermeneuts would remind us--must be partners.

Partners, period.

Partnership in a dialogue means that the conversing partners are in equal footing.

With privileges given to the schizophrenic Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino--and with the people's taxes being used to prop it up all the time and with ideological state apparatuses (read: KWF, Deped, and ChEd) as reinforcing agencies in its continued dominance over all Philippine languages many of which are on the road to extinction, how can there be 'dialogue' here?

We have to make things clear here: the provision of the laws of the Philippines--laws that have lost their meaning in the contemporary need to redefine what is the Philippine nation state is--talks of Tagalog as the basis of the national language, not this penchant for 'slash/slash' as if inaugurating a naturalizing process for that grand deception especially when the unthinking masses are not looking.

The clue--and cue--here is 'basis' NOT slashing/slashing.

When a national language cannot even make up its mind what it is, and sporting a variety of names, what deception is coming in next except to repeat the lie a la Goebbels, yes, that agent of The Greatest Fascist of them all, until that lie becomes a truth, and until that 'a truth' becomes 'the truth.'

WHAT IS HAPPENING in the Philippines is this, and let us say it: many people are forced to learn one or two languages, but some other people are not at all required by the educational apparatus of the state to know something beyond what they already know in the language or languages they were born into.

This is a clear case of linguistic asymmetry.

Every Tomas, Diko, and Hari is made to learn Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino but no one from the language community of Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino is ever required to know something in Hiligaynon or Cebuano as mediated by Hiligaynon and Cebuano.

The majority of the educatees of the Philippines go through the same ceremony and rite and ritual of doing the same thing, of knowing others, and never their own.

We call this funny case an education in Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino nationalism, but never a real case of nationalism that takes into account the diversity of peoples, languages, and cultures in the Philippines.

It is hard to be educated in diversity when all we have known and understood is nationalism in a singular language.

To accept diversity as our approach to the issue of national building and state crafting is to admit with humility that we made a mistake, and this mistake has been going on and on for so long.

To accept that we are multiple is to understand that we can exploit this multiplicity and make this country great, and it will be great because it can afford to show the world that various peoples and communities and cultures, like the variety of things in nature and in the world, can exist together in peace, and they can exist together in peace because that peace is grounded on justice.

SABBATICAL NOTES. 23 JUNE 2014. MONDAY. N2. When nationalizing a language in a diverse country, you de-nationalize the others.

THE IDEA OF A PHILIPPINE NATION STATE based on pluralism, multiplicity, and diversity is something novel.

But it is urgent as it is just and fair.

And it is just and fair because it reflects the real condition of the Philippines, whether one likes that name of the country or wants to replace it with something else.

With this as our premise, there is no reason then to institute a 'national' language.

Nationalizing a language is antithetical to the very essence of multiplicity.

The flimsy excuse that we need to have a national language the way Japan and Korea and Germany have their own is just that: a flimsy excuse.

Some talk about the 'practicality' of having many languages in a country.

But we can talk about the 'impracticality' of killing the othered languages because these are not 'de facto' languages.

We have given enough chance for this argument of nationalizing a language to show us the proof that it becomes a vehicle of progress, social justice, and development.

We have forgotten that in the institution of this national language, we have not been able to enter into a regime of real communication with our various peoples what with that 'national' language as a vehicle for all the rationalization, literal and figurative, of the same oligarchic directions of our collective life.

There is no single evidence we can show that we have talked to our various peoples in their own language, that the substance of the social contract has been translated into their own language, and that we have invited them to the table where multiplicity is honored, celebrated, and used as a premise for state crafting and nation building.

Everywhere, there is deprivation of what we are, including our right to our own mother language.

Everywhere is this deception that Rizal said so about this 'pagmamahal sa sariling wika' and we must believe this guy even if in reality he did not say those words, or he did not write them, not at all.

And to think that some teachers are using these words to lie to us.

The only way out now is to pursue what is just and fair: the pursuit of the very essence of diversity.

And there is no short-cut for this, with or without a de facto 'national' language.

WE CAN NOW make sense out of this nonsense that has become our entertainment during the last few months.

It looks like something good is going to happen, with Lady Justice, the weighing scale firmly on her hand, doing her job, and doing that job she knows best: Dispensing justice so swiftly it is so sweet.

We look into the names, and we are surprised of this possibity: that when you combine their last names--Estrada and Revilla--we have a calculus of meaning that tells us exactly where we should go: THE ROAD TO THE VILLA OF THE KING.

The road--Estrada--is the road to justice.

The villa--the concrete place of justice--is the masses' sacred place, the place of the social contract where that membership in a body politic is inaugurated, celebrated, and defended for always.

And then the reference to the king, in the 'rey' in the revilla: the king.

The king is the metaphor for the suffering people, the king (pardon the sexist reference and allusion) demanding service, including service in the name of what is just and fair.

It has been reported by GMA News two hours ago that Senator Estrada will soon find the road to Senator Revilla's cell, and there, with the roaches and rats and the loneliness of caressing cold prison bars, the two will talk about ways to save their beloved country and their beloved people from perdition.

We have prayed enough for our country.

Perhaps at this time, we need to act.

In acting, we will soon find the road to the king's villa, the king's place, the king's promised haven, refuge, home.

IN THE ILOCOS OF old, when life was better, when things were simpler, and when politicians were also corrupt but not that corrupt--or, perhaps, I am naive?--to have courage to rage was honorable.

To be able to express one's anger was something people looked forward to, and in their songs and in their community performances, we saw this sense of the authentic among the Ilokano people, the sense of some sense, and the sense of no-nonsense.

Life was real.

And our rage too.

Feelings were real, and these were investments in human relationships, and the return on investment could be smooth, high stakes, the rate up there in the skies, heavenly, sacred, and honorable.

Gone are the days of old.

Now, we have politicians who think of Ilocos and beyond are their fiefdom--their possession, their private property, God's gift to them.

As in the Ilocos so shall the Philippines.

As in the Ilocos so shall Cavite, Manila, the Senate, the Lower House, and other agencies of the polity.

Now, we have intellectuals who are lending their hand to prop up these politicians, intellectuals who should have the daring to use the grey matter between their ears, but no, they assist those in power, and they glory in their act of assisting them, convincing themselves that what they do is for the good of the public, the people, the citizenry, the homeland.

Those in that groups should include those who think of 'manufacturing images' to hide the fact that the one being imaged--the represented (or, is it misrepresented?) is simply rotten, as he is afraid of roaches and rats, even if he has already sold his soul to the highest bidder.

That highest bidder is the Devil incarnate, both material and a shadow.

Now, we have social media professionals who can think of citing from the Bible to justify what cannot be justified at all.

In doing this, they try to establish that insubstantial parallelism between the Messiah the Redeemer and that other Irredeemable Guy who dreams of leading a wretched people and an equally wretched land to salvation.

Our hopes are running low.

The spring is about to go dry.

The well is a parched earth.

The source of our patience is now a sinkhole.

On Monday, another one of those who made it sure they live the good life is joining that other one who hates roasted liempo and instead eats leche flan (has the poor ever tasted this in their lifetime?) and chicken stew soured with tamarind.

That other guy will use the power of manufacturing truth so he could manufacture consent (a la Herman's and Chomsky's analysis of American media) by the same power of false images.

And the plain power of acting.

Because of this, let us say what the Ilokanos of old would say when their raged took hold of their days.

MY ARGUMENT IS simple: The schizophrenic Pilipino/Filipino dialect of the Tagalog language being rammed into the throat of every Ilokano, Kapampangan, Bikolano, Waray, Tausog, Mangyan, Kankanaey, Ifugao, Chavacano, and the rest is bad for our collective health.

To keep it as a subject in General Education in college and university is poison.

To let it be included in the GE cluster is a waste of tuition money and student time.

There is no need to totally brainwash the already brainwashed peoples of the Philippines.

The peoples of the Philippines since pre-school have become subservient to the hegemonic educational system courtesy of naive nationalism and unproductive patriotism that we all rely on to rationalize this error that we have been doing for the last 90 years--this error of teaching them the Filipino dialect without at the same time teaching them their own language.

The Filipino dialect is not a language.

The Filipino dialect is not our 'sariling wika.' Let us call a spade a spade, despite the fact that some misguided academics say otherwise.

A dialect is not a language, but a segment of the already codified language, and that a change from 'titser' to 'guro' or otherwise as a change in the lexicon of the Tagalog in order to make it P/Filipino is one of the lousiest argument one can ever put forward to justify a mistake.

Somewhere, the advocates of 'Filipino' to be taught in college are all mistaken: there is no need for these people to waste the time of college and university students, a time that is needed (1) to make them come up with a reconnection to their own sense of self, language, and culture; and (2) to gain employable skills for their profession. Filipino the dialect has no economic value.

Apart from those teachers who will lose their job--some 10,290 of them who are full-time Filipino teachers--there is no other single argument that we can put forward to justify the teaching of this dialect without committing linguistic injustice and cultural tyranny.

I cite here the analysis of Tim Harvey. He has dissected what ills us all, and we must now name this illness as our 'eager-beaver' way of appeasing the naive nationalists and myopic patriots of the homeland. He says:

"The loss of 10,290 full-time instructors teaching Filipino in the tertiary level is an interesting argument. So, by the proponent's own admission, the policy has become a self-perpetuating, self-interested "make work" project.

"Considering that the largest and fastest growing single sector of the Philippine economy is the balikbayan economy founded on the exportation of human capital (in return for vital hard currency), and how little competency in Filipino plays a role in that (1), it seems that the work and economic argument would be better directed towards international languages (like English) that would support demand for Filipinos abroad.

"Of course, this is a continuation of the legacy of colonialism which Filipino seeks to put an end to. . . by ending the annual exportation of approximately 1 million Philippine workers, students and professionals so they can be diverted to become Filipino instructors in a glorious Filipino nation (that 70 years of this policy has failed to produce).

"I'm sorry if I may seem a little mocking of this argument. I'm afraid that I've become impatient with the hypocritical, self-serving, anti-intellectual arguments of the pro-Filipino faction.

"There is a justification for Filipino, that applies to the rest of the nation's languages. .. that is, the study and codification of all Philippine languages. Of course, as we know so well, such a more positive, embracing approach to Philippine languages (and culture) is decidely NOT the intention of Filipino which seeks to destroy them under Filipino neo-colonialism." [Retrieved from email, 20 Jun 2014)

Let the country understand that not every person in and outside the Philippines is a moron.

Let the country understand that there are so many people who mean well for the country, but these people have never been given the chance to say their piece.

Let the country understand that these thoughts are not reactionary thoughts but thoughts that are aimed at a better way of nation- and state-building.

SABBATICAL NOTES. 21 JUNE 2014. SATURDAY. N2. Air Traffic in Manila next to impossible.

THOSE WHO take the skies to move from one point to another in the world would always easily make comparison between and among airports.

Layovers are good opportunities to exchange notes with bored passengers.

Layovers are moments to criticize the worst of airports one has been to.

Since February this year, I have been flying regularly in various places in the Philippines and elsewhere.

Each time I catch a plane at the NAIA, I am worried of two things: 1. the cab that would bring me to that airport, and 2. the plane that would spirit me out of that hellhole called Manila.

The first one, I figured a way to solve it by befriending taxi drivers whose attitudes and demeanor and deportment suited my own.

The second one is beyond control, like that Ebola virus running wild and causing havoc now in West Africa according to some news account.

And like that Ebola virus, the air traffic situation at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport--why on earth did they change Manila International Airport, pray, tell me?!--almost always gives you (1) fever and (2) mental hemorrhage.

The first one, as a result of your blood pressure shooting up because planes do not land on time and they do not take off on time and the second one, as a result of your inability to account these impossible things happening at this airport, with all the bad elements and spirits lurking, and with horrible stories about airport people trying to fleece those coming into the country.

Our trip from Siem Reap to Manila was one heck of a time--and it was not a good time.

Two hours of delay in Siem Reap because Cebu Pacific did not come on time, and more than two hours of waiting to taxi after landing two hours late at the NAIA.

By the time we were able to get out of the airport, it was about 0500 AM, or four hours late.

Yesterday, you
emailed me about what is happening back there in the home country. You know
well that even from afar, I keep tab of what is dished out by spin doctors who
are in the business of tampering with history—or if you so wish, this business
of writing history from their perspective, from their dominant position as
power-holders who, for centuries and centuries on end, have not let up with
their project of rationalized greed, wanton accumulation of wealth, and
systematic prevarication to our people to perpetuate, in an unceasing way,
their stranglehold on us.

You are right,
son. These people, though born of the land, have not learned from the lessons of
the past. You were citing Jose Rizal in your letter, your phraseology renewing
the same wisdom he shared with us in order for us to learn and see and know and
understand. You said: the book of the past is a book of knowledge since it is
the repository of all the things that give us a handle, a direction, a sense of
self, an idea of what is to come. You said too: we need to take to heart this
book of the past in much the same way we need air to breathe, air to live. I do
not know what to say even if I am your father and in linear time, in a
reckoning that cuts up history into empty moments, times, and events, I am the
past and you are the present and the future. I can only laugh now and from my
perch here abroad where the wind is cold and the mornings are foggy and the
future of other lands and peoples are divined and defined in the war rooms of
generals and presidents who have appointed themselves as guardians of democracy
and Christianity, I see the distance between us: a distance in time, a distance
in mind-set, a distance in the manner of loving our very land, our very
heartland. You say you want to take part in the remaking of history when I
warned you of your going to the anti-war rallies, you and the rest of the young
in the state university crying out loud that warning to the president and her
cohorts and allies and palace jesters about their not knowing history and not
learning from the past. You were quoting Santayana, son—well, not exactly
citing him but you and your battalion of idealists were restating his case:
Those who do not learn from history will be condemned to repeat it. You all
were a mile away from the pretenders of intellect of the inangbayan,they who can only know how to corrupt Rizal
and Santayana and to accent, fallaciously, the wise philosophers of old who
talked of justice and love and peace and equality as not separate dreams but
concrete realities that are part of a continuum. Perhaps they did not read
Diokno or they never understand how he articulated that intertwining of history
and collective dream and the task of nation building. Land and liberty, he said
are extensions of each other. So do justice and jobs. So do food and freedom.
What a way of reading history—of opening up its can of worms in order to name
our pains, christen our sorrows, diagnose our seven times seven years of
solitude! Ah, that biblical number comes to me like a ghost lurking at the back
of my head even as I try to distance myself from this little talk we have—a
father and son talk, if you so wish to call it that way. But I would like to
believe that the reverse is truer: That you set this whole discourse into
motion, you who are so young and yet pestering me with our business towards the
future. Is it the case that you have critically thought so much about the need
to reread our history by reclaiming our stories and to allow the real actors to
come forward and narrate of their actions and courage and boldness and daring?
May the good Lord of life and history, you who are so young and yet who are
conscious of our destiny be blessed more and more. The Lord of liberty and
freedom and justice is the Lord of history, son. The incarnation story, minus
all the gender and sexuality irrationalities and illogicalities, tells us so
much about power and truth in our quest for meaning and substance and
redemption.

(2)

These people
whom today play on our fate and our future are the very people who have come to
our shores and took part uninvited in our feasting. They have not died nor gone
to the beyond nor drowned in the river of Lethe where memory is erased, where
recollection has no place. No. These people who have come to rob us of our
dignity and self-respect have continued to resurrect. They keep on
reincarnating to haunt us in our sleep. No, we cannot anymore splurge on joy
and happiness as we used to because the history grounding our joy and history
has turned to ashes, to nothing, to zilch.

I heard you
translating this long duration of oppression of our people into a mystical
metaphor that harks back to two covenants of Israel, the old one that was so
obsessed with the law of law and the second one that pillared on the law
of love. This oppression has been going on for a long time in human history
and history itself has sided, it seems, with those who have the guts and
gumption to rule over the others unjustly. You called this phenomenon as “the
seven time seven years of solitude of our people” a la Gabriel Marquez in his
artistic rendition of the solitude of the Latin American peoples and their
centuries of oppression under the European and their allies, and the priests
and other religious leaders. Perhaps you were thinking of Rizal’s conclusion
that when a country does not have the boldness and daring to open the books of
its past, that country will never have a stake of the future?

You said you
are worried about the future and in your youth, at eighteen and in your prime,
I should tell you that you have no cause for worry. But to be honest: I have so
much cause for worry even as you also tell me that perhaps there is a fair
fighting chance with that actor who never died in any of his films but always
ended up vanquishing the cruel overlord and then, of course, hailed by the
people as their hero, redeemer, savior. But then again you said that this actor
might not stand a chance. A broadcaster with a deep baritone to hide his
ambition and to convince every foolish voter that he is indeed sincere and ever
willing to be crucified on the cross in the name of the last Juan de la Cruz is
offering himself up for immolation in the fire of the nation’s politics. And
the reigning queen in our politics-as-usual life wants us to believe her, she
with her rice stalks for a bouquet in that multicolored poster splashed on all
the city walls and house doors and concrete posts, she with her big American
roses smiling sheepishly as if saying: “Give me a chance, give me chance—one
fat chance like the one from whom I got my surname. He was one great president
of the masses and the pobres, diba?” We must now do the
accounting, however. And our accounting must take its genesis and ground in
history: that we gave her the presidency on a silver platter in the hope that
she would do better than the Erap of the masses, the Erap whose life was a
product of programmatic publicity stunt. As if we did not go through more than
twenty years of misrule and dictatorship—as if the terror and torment that
enveloped us in all those years remained unnamed, unuttered, buried in the
deepest recesses of that which is the opposite of history, hidden somewhere
where there is no memory, no remembrance, no recollection. Ay, those years of
fear! But what have we done to the books, we who testified to the atrocities of
the nights in detention centers and in prison houses sometimes called the
houses of freedom by the henchmen of the regime? What, indeed, have we done to
the books of the past—books that recorded the shadows of our desaperecidos,
they who were deprived of ritual and song, of lament and joy? I remember still,
my son, the young men and women who were so full of promise but were there in
Mendiola to fight for our people’s freedom. One had his head cracked, his
memory lost forever. Another ended up in a box, his name unknown, his body
battered and bruised. They were many—and they were young. As I remember them
today, I remember our loss, this loss complete, final, total.

(3)

As I write
this letter to you, I scan the evening sky in this land that I have come into
to seek grace and blessing and benediction. I need the grace to keep me by each
day as I try to remember the terrors of each dusk and daybreak in those dark
days of our past. I need the blessing to make me become bold as I try to
translate into verses all that I still remember about the glories of our
memories that narrate with rhyme and reason our stories of courage and
kindness. I need the benediction so that I could give this same benediction
back to our people, to our ancestors, to all those who sacrificed in our name,
on our behalf. We who are alive owe our life to those who have gone before us,
they who gave up so much so that we could have so much. I must confess: that as
I name the stars by remembering all the sacrifices of our heroes, I remember
all of you—you and all the rest of the young of our land, you who are our
future, you who will fulfill our dreams. So much work has yet to be done but we
must begin where this work must begin: Our act of remembering. To remember, I
must keep on saying is to re-member – to become a member again, to
become again a part of human community.

For the future
has no name, no reality, no meaning, no substance unless this future is
remembered today—and today is precisely because the past makes it
possible to be so. In essence, time is a continuum in history and the segments
do not have independent meaning and truth. Instead, these segments form a
single weave, twining and intertwining, and then in one full sweep, the
interconnections assume a form, shape, and substance. Memory, truth, desire,
yearning, longing—these are the stuff of hope—even if this hope is against hope
itself as is the case of the home country right now. You tell me of your dreams
of the future, son. I will tell you also our dreams. Your dreams, our
dreams—these form a single, grand, big tale we will forever cherish, we who
have the courage to name our sorrow and pain.

Son, we need
to break the hold of the past to free us all from its terros and torments. In
this breaking hold of that unruly past, the past becomes itself our present, a presence
negating all absence,a presence
participating in eternal time.